


cabin pressure

by meguri_aite



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, M/M, season 3 spoilers and theories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 12:57:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11829228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meguri_aite/pseuds/meguri_aite
Summary: When his feet stopped at the door to Keith's cabin, Lance thought to act surprised. But he was too tired, and no one was looking anyway.





	cabin pressure

Lance was not thinking about where he was going.

In fact, he was doing his best not to think at all. He blindly followed the curves of the castle corridors, trying to shake off the images that kept replaying in his head. A translucent dome that separated Xalia from the planet’s unbreathable atmosphere. The city below, clinging to an artificial lake’s shore like shells washed up by the sea. A surprised low note the dome made on impact, for a confused moment when the structure looked capable of absorbing the blow with nothing worse than a gentle tremor through its walls.

Lance looked down at his knuckles. Smooth, brown skin, and yet he still couldn’t shake off the feeling that he punched the hole in the dome with his own hands. It was unthinkable that something that destroyed an entire city didn’t even leave a scratch on him. So he tried not to think.

When his feet stopped, Lance thought to act surprised with where they led him. But he was too tired, and no one was looking anyway.  

“Hey Keith? Man, you in there?”

A few months ago, Lance wouldn’t have thought to look for him here. (He wouldn’t have thought to look for him, period.) He used to make jokes about the hours Keith spent in the training hall. Here was someone who’s got his beauty routine all figured out: slam a door, dropkick some fifty Altean gladiator dolls, run through some fifty hundred pretty swooshy sword stances. The joke didn’t seem so funny anymore. Maybe it lost its zing on one of the trips to Keith’s cabin.

Still no answer. Was Keith out? Lance wondered if Keith was back at the command deck anyway, even though it was Shiro’s shift now. It only _seemed_ like Keith was at the deck around the clock, right?

“Keith?”

Lance reached out to rap on the door, but already the panels were sliding apart, leaving him and his raised fist to hover in the doorway.

At first, he thought the room was empty and the castle opened the door guided by its alien castle logic. You know, the same logic that threw the concept of personal space out of the window and to the other end of the galaxy, and endorsed brain sharing group meditation as a bonding activity for a bunch of high-strung teenagers. Who knows, by those standards, walking into someone’s empty room could be just a trust-building gesture.

But then a lump of shadows on Keith’s bed moved and revealed itself to be, well, Keith. Lance should have guessed that - Keith wouldn’t have left his bed unmade. The guy had pathologically Spartan ideas of cozy. He probably didn’t even know what a pillow fort was, came a thought that was too sad to think.

“Hey.” Keith’s voice was raspy. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“Did I wake you up? I can leave.”

Lance took a step back, but Keith sat up on the bed, shaking his head.

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

Lance was starting to see that, too. The castle rooms didn’t have any visible light switches, lamps glowing or dimming on their own - detecting motion, or possibly bursts of team spirit. Shadows on Keith’s bed grew shorter, throwing his face into stark relief. His cheek had a faint pillow print on it, but his eyes were fever-bright and wide.

“Did you want to talk?”

Keith didn’t look like he minded the interruption, and Lance could even see him make a decent effort to smooth his customary frown. A part of Lance still wanted to just tell Keith everything that was eating at him, and lean into the offered shoulder for support - metaphorically or literally, he wasn’t very picky at the moment. Another, bigger part of him could only see the downturned line of Keith’s mouth, angry red and unhappy.

“I think you might want to do the talking this time around, actually,” Lance said. He sounded more sure than he felt, but arranged himself comfortably on the floor by the bed, propped his weight on his arms and gave Keith his best  ‘come on, I’m listening’ look.

Lance had confidence Keith could kick him out of the room if he was really unwelcome, but none at all that the guy would talk. The thought had a sting to it, but his attention was on more important things now.

“Since when are you a mindreader?” Keith asked, but there was no bite in it. It was also, quite possibly, the most weak-ass repartee Lance had ever heard from him. Downright alarming.

“Since we’ve started flying giant robots powered by a telepathic link?”

A corner of Keith’s mouth curved upwards. “Walked into this one, huh?”

“You totally did, but no one can be awesome at all times, like me,” Lance allowed graciously. “Though you’re doing alright, sometimes. _Are_ you doing alright?”

Lance tried to catch Keith’s eyes again, read something in the worry lines creasing his forehead, but Keith wasn’t looking at him. He was peering at the foot of his bed as if it held the answers. His hand reached for his belt until it found the knife’s handle and paused there, ready for flight or fight.

The minutes dragged. Lance told himself to sit still and watched Keith worry his bottom lip. The graze of his teeth looked painful enough that Lance’s own mouth tingled in sympathy.

When Keith eventually spoke up, his voice was soft and quiet, as if he was still alone with this thoughts.

“How do you know that you’ve made the right decision?”

“How do I know - what decision?” Lance felt momentarily disoriented.

“How do you know that your choice is right?”

“Is this about Voltron? Because I don’t think we’ve been given a choice.” Lance meant to sound flippant, but his voice faltered when Keith pinned him with a stare like hot poker. “It _is_ about Voltron, isn’t it.”

Keith just looked at him, intense and restless and, evidently, terrible at talking about feelings.

“Is it about today?” Lance made a guess. But Keith wasn’t in charge of the Xalia mission - Shiro gave the orders, while Keith headed an undercover team to the Galra ship, flanked by Pidge and Allura. “Are you thinking about the gambit, too?” A barely detectable shift in Keith’s posture that Lance took as a yes, and he couldn’t help what he asked next. “Do you think I could have done better?”

 _Gambit_ was Shiro’s operative word for the mission. It sounded very military lingo and grown up, and Lance hated that he couldn’t enjoy it. That instead of shiny, victorious things, the word turned out to be a candy wrapper for _calculated sacrifice_.

Lose a city. Gain a foothold.

But Keith shook his head. “No. You carried out the orders well. There was no other, better way to do that.” He didn’t say anything more, but his intent silence pushed Lance to keep on talking. Were they playing a guessing game?

Keith was never a big talker, but when he bothered to say something, it was usually pretty straightforward. Of course, he had this whole unspoken bond thing going on with Shiro, a history private enough to communicate eternal devotion in sideways glances, but when he wanted others to get a message, he could get it across just fine. Not gracefully or god forbid, diplomatically; he should just leave high table to Allura and fraternizing with friends and enemies to _natural charmers_ on the team. But as a captain, Keith was already changing: painstakingly learning to say the things he previously wouldn’t have bothered to put into words, filling in the gaps that must have been easy for a loner to sidestep.

At this moment, however, he seemed to have reverted to the Keith of old, a boy who could have sat silent for months staring holes into a map, willing it to spill its secrets. Under such scrutiny, Lance could have easily spilled his, if he had any, but Keith’s own?

“Is that a captain thing? ‘Cause you know, you might not be the greatest at motivational speeches and team spirit like Shiro, but you’re actually doing - “

Before Lance could finish his sentence, Keith jumped off the bed and landed silently right next to Lance. Not quite a reaction he expected. Leftover battle adrenaline spiking through his system, Lance regrouped before his mind caught up with his body, crouching with one arm stretched out in defense.

Unfazed, Keith grabbed Lance by the wrist and forced his arm to the side, leaving Lance no opportunity to pull or look away. He didn’t do anything more - just held on, face too close for comfort and chest heaving. Hand bent at an awkward angle and wrist bruised in Keith’s iron grip, Lance had a clear and disconcerting thought that they were not fighting.  

“How do you know that it was the right decision, back then, and that you’re doing the right thing, day after day, standing by it?” Keith hissed, hot breath searing Lance’s cheek. “Can a right decision hurt others? And how can a decision be wrong, if you’d have made it again, as many times as it takes?”

Lance had a distant realization that Keith’s hand was trembling. Unthinkingly, he placed his free hand over Keith’s fingers around his crushed wrist - not to pry them away, but to sooth. Something he remembered doing as an older sibling, what feels like a long time ago.

“I won’t know what you want me to hear if you don’t say it,” Lance said gently, though his heartbeat was heavy and clogged.

“Can’t,” Keith choked. “Don’t you see, I _can’t_ ,” he said, yanking back his hand.

But Lance had still his hand on Keith’s, and letting him go wasn’t an option at all, so he did what he knew how to do best with Keith: he yanked _back_ , pulling them both in the opposite direction.

With a thud and a yelp, Lance ended up sprawled on the floor, with Keith’s full weight and approximately ten elbows digging into his chest.

Keith must be getting out of shape by not kicking enough gladiator dolls these days, came a strangled thought. It’s either that, or flying Red just makes you naturally awesome at hand to hand combat. Lance could roll with that explanation, too.

Keith didn’t seem in a rush to stand up and lay where he was, his face turned awkwardly sideways. Lance decided this was as good a time as any to learn to breathe under the weight of a ton of bricks. Who knew, with their lifestyle, it might come in handy one day.

“If I say something, nothing will be the same again, for the others,” Keith said eventually, his face still pressed into Lance’s shoulder.

Their baseline for same was probably different, but Lance didn’t want to go there.

“So you think we can’t handle it, huh?” he said instead, but it was hard to sound feisty when you were plastered on the floor. “Don’t you go getting a big head just coz you’re the captain now.”

“I’m not,” Keith said, indignant.

Lance thought Keith would at least raise his head to protest, but he just shifted a bit. Now his head was turned the other way, his hair close enough to tickle Lance’s neck.

“I’m not,” Keith repeated, quieter. “It’s the opposite, actually. It’s _selfish_.”

That, with Keith, only ever meant one thing. Even if that made no sense.

“ _Shiro_.”

Lance felt Keith freeze, a lack of movement so complete that Lance had to put a hand on his back to remind him to breathe.

“You know?”

“I don’t,” Lance said, absolutely truthfully. “But you can tell me. If you want to.”

“What if it ruins everything?”

“I want to help.” Lance didn’t know if he could.

“Because we’re a team?” Keith said, in a small, careful voice.

“Because I’m your _friend_ , you moron,” growled Lance, despairing at Keith (the moron), the moron (himself), and finally shoving Keith off his chest, if only to be able to growl at his startled face from above. Tactical advantage of height, awesomely demonstrated by a paladin of Voltron. “And because you are allowed to want help for things you want for yourself, not just for the wellbeing of the entire goddamn universe!”

Keith looked disbelieving, and awfully young, and a lot like a person who was about to take an interstellar plunge for the first time - that is, if you forgot that Keith was trigger-happy about interstellar plunges and other suicidal aerobatics. So not much like Keith at all, Lance thought with an odd tug at his heart.

 _Take that plunge_ , he urged mentally, because hell, they flew giant robot lions, and lived in an alien space castle, and telepathy was no joke. _Take it_.

“I need to save Shiro,” Keith finally said, voice cracking. “Find him, before he destroys Voltron. Protect him from harm, while he tries.”

Lance searched for any impulse to question what he heard, to call out the contraction and laugh it off, and came up empty.

Quite unfortunately, he figured he believed Keith unconditionally.

That left only one thing to say.

“Well then. Tell me what I can do.”

 


End file.
